watched a play: “Multiple Bad Things”, by Back to Back Theatre
Date: 21 August 2026, 8 PM. Venue: Waterfront Theatre at Esplanade, Singapore
A howl emerged from the character on stage. “You're a bag of rats!”
The character had a pot belly, wore a beard, and sported a mass of curly, rust-brown hair – and when he got upon his feet, after having lain down conspicuously, the audience could see, stretching around his corpulent belly, the waistband of his off-white underwear.
“My mental health is going from bad to worse!” he screamed.
The character was not in a monologue; for the large part of half an hour, he had been verbally jabbed, poked, and mocked by another character: buxom, blonde and lipstick-ed. And cruel.
Cue cruel laughter.
“It's one thing after another with you people,” this latter character said, in a whining voice. “And you always blame it on me.”
What a havoc-wrecking, mind-contorting use of the language of victims, to bully and further victimise the former character, who had finally lost his patience with the relentless verbal assaults. Was he wrong to erupt in rage?
Nestled among the smartly-dressed audience of about seventy people, comfortable in my seat near the stage (third aisle from the front), I believed him. It was realistic.
The characters had said before opening the scene: “This is a play. If anything on stage bothers you, this is not real.”
But even if the play features a group of actors living realistically under imaginary circumstances, as tutors of the craft of acting like to repeat as a mantra, the audience have palpably resonated with the chaos and emotional upheaval on stage.
Look! It is a parody. A parody of the infinite pinpricks that ensue from living in society as someone who looks conspicuously different: a stammering speech, for example. Or a pot belly. Or a hand that never stops twitching.
That was why the audience laughed. They recognised somebody in the mirror. The mirror that is the stage.
Once upon a time, in a kindergarten far, far away, a young boy loosed his faeces inside his kindergarten shorts. His classmate made a disgusted face and would loudly tell a parental figure about it, at the kindergarten gates. The kindergarten teacher smelled the faeces within the hour, and quietly decided to resign from the job as soon as possible – perhaps the next day. That young boy was five years old and his name was Derrick. Question: where is Derrick today, and does he remember that day in kindergarten?
Back on stage, the play ended with the sound of wind and rain. A character named DeathWeather clapped his hands and the lights switched off.
The popular king's military campaign ended with failure because the winter had proven too cold for the horses and chariots he had had sent into the northern country.
I am grateful today for: no hurricanes, no earthquakes, no food-poisoning (cue diarrhoea and vomitting), and no Covid lockdown.
There are doubtlessly multiple bad things in the world. But I am grateful that it is not worse.
I will tell my sister I love her.
- fin
Note: “As an ensemble of actors who identify as having an intellectual disability or as neurodivergent, Back to Back Theatre continues to prod and confront audience expectations and prejudices. Multiple Bad Things wades further into treacherous waters, with thrilling results.” (Quoting from a 2024 review by Tim Byrne from The Guardian).